Cara Delevingne Shares How She Learned to Talk About Depression

Cara Delevingne has been very open about her experience with depression. She said at the 2015 Women in the World Summit that she'd experienced suicidal ideation, and she told Esquire last year that she spent six months out of school and went on medication to deal with it. Her new book, Mirror Mirror, recounts her mental health struggles. But it wasn't always this way. She used to keep her depression a secret, she recently said on This Morning.

"I was so ashamed of how I felt because I had such a privileged upbringing," she said. "I'm very lucky. But I had depression. I had moments where I didn't want to carry on living. But then the guilt of feeling that way and not being able to tell anyone because I shouldn't feel that way just left me feeling blame and guilt."

Over time, though, she came to understand that all kinds of people can experience depression, and hers was just as valid as anyone else's. The turning point, she said, "was realizing that I shouldn't be ashamed of feeling these things, and that I wasn't alone — learning that everyone goes through similar things. That being vulnerable is actually a strength not a weakness, and showing your emotion and being honest about it [is good.]"

Now, she wants others to know the struggling with mental health does not foreclose all future possibilities of happiness. "If you learn to love yourself and not give in to what other people think about you or not care what they think, and just follow your dreams, you can achieve anything," she said. "And that's what I want to be for teenagers – not necessarily a role model, but someone who has gone through it and come out the other side."